Inscriptions

1986

13 minutes

Two voices and piano

Walt Whitman

Nan Nall and Lise Messier with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts.

January 8, 1987, Boston, Massachusetts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Nan Nall and Lise Messier, sopranos, Glenn Parker, piano

Available on demo CD

1. One’s Self I Sing
2. Look Down Fair Moon
3. A child said, What is the grass?
4. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
5. Inscription

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Walt Whitman

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love….